Even by the standards of cable news, Greta Van Susteren is an outsize personality.

On her Fox News prime-time show, she covers murder trials one minute and bailout money the next. On her popular blog, she posts almost hourly on most days and chats with viewers via Skype.

She responds to seemingly every perceived blemish — and lately there have been plenty. Her critics have questioned her husband’s advising of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska and portrayed Ms. Van Susteren as a spokeswoman of sorts for the governor and the governor’s husband, Todd.

She also responds to positive coverage, including an article in U.S. News & World Report this month that hailed her for quick thinking when a fellow passenger on a train had a severe allergic reaction. It said that Ms. Van Susteren provided Benadryl when Ana Marie Cox, a prominent blogger, fell ill on a train from New York to Washington in April.

All the while, Ms. Van Susteren’s ratings remain the envy of many a cable news host — but the numbers are considerably lower than those of Fox’s opinion shows, and they have prompted speculation (dismissed by the network) that she might be moved from the competitive 10 p.m. time slot.

Ms. Van Susteren, a former lawyer who came to prominence covering the O. J. Simpson trial for CNN in the mid-1990s, plays a unique role at Fox, which is owned by the News Corporation. She covers a mix of political, legal and financial news. Unlike her right-wing prime-time counterparts Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, Ms. Van Susteren — whom Rupert Murdoch, the company’s chairman, described as a liberal in 2003 — leaves most of the opinion-mongering to her guests.

She has interviewed virtually every boldface name in Washington, where her show, “On the Record,” is based. Some of her guests — John Kerry and Rosie O’Donnell, to name two recent examples — are unlikely to appear on the network’s other talk shows.

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Ms. Van Susteren interviewed George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton in Texas after Hurricane Ike.Credit
On the Record

Ms. Van Susteren has interviewed Ms. Palin three times, the first time during the candidate’s vice presidential campaign last fall. The weekend after the election, Ms. Van Susteren and her husband, John Coale, met the Palins at their home in Alaska for a widely promoted interview. Viewers also saw her on a snowmobiling ride with Ms. Palin’s husband.

While there, Mr. Coale, a prominent trial lawyer who helped lead the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, talked to Ms. Palin about her legal bills and advised her to start a political action committee. “I started the PAC for her over the next month or two, and helped start a legal defense fund for her. That’s about it,” Mr. Coale said last week. “I never advised her on any politics or anything like that.”

Mr. Coale’s assistance to Ms. Palin, first reported by The Washington Post in March, prompted questions about the couple’s combination of journalistic and political work.

Many news organizations have policies that discourage or prohibit staff members from covering events to which their spouses are connected. Last week, the news Web site Politico said that Mr. Coale had also suggested to Ms. Palin that she forge an alliance with Hillary Rodham Clinton by using the PAC to help pay down Mrs. Clinton’s campaign debts.

In an interview, Ms. Van Susteren defended her husband’s work, calling him “almost a quintessential citizen” who had encouraged politicians to “reach across the aisle.” She said she had had only one private conversation with Ms. Palin. “I don’t have a relationship with her,” she said. “It’s not like people think it is.”

She said that conversation occurred three weeks ago when the governor called to cancel her trip to Washington for the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner. On the recommendation of an executive at Fox, Ms. Van Susteren had invited the Palins, a hot booking for the celebrity-studded dinner.

Mr. Palin still traveled to Washington and worked the party circuit with Ms. Van Susteren, prompting Politico to call her his “handler” after she told a reporter that his presence at a garden party was off the record. (She felt it was good manners to intercede because it was a social event, she said.)

Bill Shine, the senior vice president for programming, expressed little concern about the ties. “There are always some sort of, let’s just say, unique relationships that happen when you live in Washington,” he said in a telephone interview. “It’s the culture of that town.”

He said Ms. Van Susteren did “not necessarily” have to disclose on television that her husband had worked with Ms. Palin.

Some critics have accused Ms. Van Susteren of playing favorites with Ms. Palin. David Zurawik, a longtime television critic for The Baltimore Sun, wrote that she had conducted “cotton-candy interviews” of Ms. Palin.

In an interview, he called Mr. Coale’s work “an extension of what Greta’s doing on the air.”

“They’re her champions or her defense attorneys,” Mr. Zurawik said.

Mr. Coale, a longtime Democrat, has connections that cross party lines. He calls himself a friend of Mrs. Clinton’s and a supporter of Senator John McCain’s, and he said he called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and “told her to hang in there” amid a media firestorm about her briefings on interrogation techniques.

On one occasion, Ms. Palin asked Mr. Coale to check the veracity of a phone call from former President Bill Clinton’s office. (During the campaign, she had been fooled by a radio host posing as President Nicolas Sarkozy of France.) He confirmed that Mr. Clinton was indeed trying to reach her.

Ms. Van Susteren said suggestions that her husband’s relationships with politicians affect her bookings “insult my staff,” who she said worked hard to get guests for her program. Mr. Coale also said he had no connection to the Palin interviews.

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Megyn Kelly, a co-host at Fox, is thought to be a potential heir to Ms. Van Susteren.Credit
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

While all TV anchors have vocal supporters, Mr. Coale is a uniquely vigorous defender of his wife. Pointing out her strong ratings in an e-mail message to a reporter in 2006, after CNN moved Anderson Cooper to 10 p.m., he said, “All the king’s horses (Oprah, ‘60 Minutes,’ Vanity Fair) and all the king’s men (the New York ‘in crowd’) can’t make people watch Anderson Cooper over Greta.”

Ms. Van Susteren herself does not hesitate to throw darts, including on her blog, GretaWire, which is viewed more than two million times a month. When CNN put up a billboard celebrating Mr. Cooper’s ratings victory over Ms. Van Susteren in 2008, she accused her former network of lying and bragged that she had beaten Mr. Cooper by about 500,000 homes.

(In recent months “On the Record” has pulled ahead of the CNN show, “Anderson Cooper 360,” in part because of Fox’s explosive ratings gains after the election.)

It is unclear how much longer Ms. Van Susteren will be at Fox. When Glenn Beck joined the network in January and posted high ratings in the 5 p.m. time slot, some wondered whether his program would be moved to 10 p.m.

Ms. Van Susteren’s contract will end next year, if it is not renewed. Megyn Kelly, a morning co-host who is considered a rising star at Fox, is the leading candidate to replace Ms. Van Susteren at 10 p.m., according to three people with knowledge of the deliberations, which were intended to be private.

Ms. Van Susteren declined to say how long she expected to stay at Fox, saying, “I really enjoy what I’m doing” but adding, “there’s a lot more to life than this.”

Correction: June 2, 2009

An article on May 25 about the Fox News Channel anchor Greta Van Susteren misstated the title for Bill Shine, an executive at the channel. He is senior vice president for programming, not executive vice president for programming.